Stellar Ecosystem
News

The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) #34 round awarded $1,717,287 worth of XLM to 17 innovative projects building on the Stellar blockchain. Projects span DeFi, payments, developer tools, gaming, and infrastructure, showcasing Stellar's growing ecosystem for serious builders. Highlights include Greep Pay for stablecoin POS, NebulaVRF for on-chain randomness, and DappRadar for Soroban tracking.

This article explains composability in DeFi and blockchain development using a hot rod analogy, detailing how different protocols and smart contracts can integrate seamlessly on Stellar to create more powerful financial systems. It covers DeFi building blocks, composability benefits, TVL growth, and practical considerations for building composable projects on Stellar.

This article explains how to monitor Soroswap, the first DEX on the Soroban Blockchain within the Stellar ecosystem, using Alterscope's risk infrastructure. Alterscope provides real-time metrics on security, liquidity, development activity, audits, TVL, volume, and social engagement for informed DeFi risk management. Soroswap, developed by Palta Labs, offers fast, low-cost token swaps with strong security features including audits by OtterSec and Runtime Verification.

Pelago Labs announced its integration with Stellar to build a crypto-enabled supply chain financing platform that tokenizes account receivables and provides working capital to suppliers through USDC settlements on Stellar.

COCA, a stablecoin payments platform, has secured strategic investment from the Stellar Development Foundation and FunFair Ventures. The funding will accelerate COCA's expansion within the Stellar ecosystem, enabling seamless stablecoin payments through non-custodial debit cards and IBANs to over 80 million merchants worldwide.

Blend V2 is launching with audits wrapping up soon. The migration allows lenders, borrowers, and backstoppers to move to V2 at their own pace while V1 remains operational, with key improvements including flash loan support, expanded pool parameters, and better liquidation mechanics.

The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) #33 round awarded $1,033,620 in XLM to 14 projects across Build Awards. Highlights include Stellarcarbon for carbon offsetting, CodeLnPay for cross-border payments, and Warmancer: Black Friday for blockchain gaming. The round introduced SCF 6.1 updates streamlining submissions for future rounds.

PaltaLabs attended BUIDL HERE conference in Puerto Rico, delivering university talks on blockchain development and participating in panels on talent pipeline and workforce preparation. The team presented Soroswap Finance and DeFindex, marking a strategic commitment to developing blockchain talent and building community across Latin America through planned workshops with Stellar Chile ambassadors.

OpenZeppelin's security audit of the Stellar Contracts Library, a new set of smart contract components for Soroban, identified one high-severity issue, one medium-severity issue, and five low-severity issues across fungible token and pausable utility modules. All issues have been resolved through pull requests.

PaltaLabs won the Best Oracle-Based Smart Contract Award at the 2nd Reflector Dev Contest for Trustless Portfolio Manager, an automated DeFi portfolio rebalancing tool built on Soroban that combines Reflector price feeds, DeFindex vaults, and Soroswap AMM functionality.

A comprehensive guide to testing smart contracts on Stellar using Soroban, covering unit tests, integration tests, fork tests, fuzzing, differential testing, and code coverage strategies all built into the Rust SDK.

The Stellar Community Fund returns for its sixth iteration with a focus on Soroban smart contracts, introducing new focal points including the Kickstart bootcamp, SCF Build Awards (up to $150,000 in XLM grants), and delegate panels for expert mentorship.

The Stellar Development Foundation released its Q4 2024 report highlighting a transformative year with 18 billion network operations, $32 billion in payment volume, and significant ecosystem growth including 640% Soroban TVL expansion and Protocol 22 upgrade.

Tansu has successfully validated the first tranche of its Stellar Community Fund build Award, completing three key milestones for a decentralized organization (DAO) on Stellar. This includes a Soroban smart contract backend with DAO functionality, a matching frontend, and extensive maintenance work. Additional efforts focus on IPFS integration, design improvements, anonymous voting, and reducing external dependencies for true decentralization.

Balanced released its Q4 2024 update, highlighting launches on Stellar, Solana, and Optimism, alongside BALN cross-chain deployment across multiple blockchains including Stellar. Key achievements include intent-based trades between Arbitrum and Sui, smart contract audits, and preparations for cross-chain liquidity and Savings Rate. The DAO reported $82k in fees, with ongoing governance and economic enshrinement progress.

The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) Round 31 awarded $2,068,710 in XLM to 22 projects, including payment solutions, DeFi platforms, developer tools, and RWA tokenization engines. The round received 123 submissions, with 71 being first-time applicants, demonstrating strong ecosystem growth.

The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) #32 awarded $1,377,495 worth of XLM to 17 projects, including wallets, DeFi platforms, payment solutions, and developer tools. The round received 78 submissions, with 40 being first-time applicants, demonstrating continued ecosystem growth and innovation.

Stellar RPC, formerly known as Soroban RPC, has been rebranded with Protocol 22 to serve as the unified data access layer for all Stellar developers. The rename reflects the tool's broader applicability beyond smart contracts and positions it as the recommended entry point for new builders, moving away from the increasingly impractical Horizon infrastructure.

DappLooker reviews its remarkable 2024 growth, highlighting 3x revenue increase, expansion to 25+ chains, and over 1000 protocols onboarded. Key launches include AI-powered Loky analyst and innovative tools like DataBots and AI Studio. Partnerships span Arbitrum, Stellar Community Fund, Manta, HAQQ, and others, with active participation in Web3 events.

The Stellar Development Foundation published a comprehensive 2024 year-in-review highlighting major ecosystem achievements including the mainnet launch of Soroban smart contracts, expansion of DeFi protocols like Blend, integration of payment solutions with MoneyGram and Stripe, real-world asset adoption through Franklin Templeton and Paxos, and humanitarian aid initiatives through UNHCR partnerships.

Ghanaian fintech Seevcash integrated DeFindex's white-label DeFi yield infrastructure on Stellar in just one week, slashing development time from 12+ months and reducing code by 50%. Post-marketing, TVL spiked 433% to $13K with 24 active users earning yields on stablecoins. The SDK enabled gasless transactions via Stellar sponsorship, building trust in unbanked markets.

A developer tackles a challenge to create the smallest invokable Soroban smart contract on Stellar mainnet, beating the previous 66-byte record by using an empty export name. The solution shrinks the WASM binary to 39 bytes including the required metadata section. Mainnet transaction hashes are provided for upload and invocation.

Balanced's 2024 review highlights explosive growth with new features like Savings Rate offering 17% average returns, economic enshrinement with ICON, and expansion to 12 blockchains including Stellar. Key developments include cross-chain loans, BALN & sICX tokens, and intent-based trades for efficient swapping. The protocol looks ahead to 2025 with cross-chain liquidity, more chain integrations, and enhanced trading.

The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) #30 round awarded $2.17 million in XLM to 22 projects in the first round of SCF 6.0, including initiatives for DeFi, payments, humanitarian aid, NFTs, developer tools, and financial inclusion across the Stellar ecosystem.